ulate OF Sed be 
To His Excellency, Governor JoHn M. Haminron: 
We beg leave to submit herewith our report for the year ending 
September 30th, 1884, as the Board of State Fish Commissioners. 
The work of the Commission,—now fully operative, no longer an 
experiment—has developed throughout the State an increased 
interest in the subject of Fish protection and culture. Five 
years ago ponds for fish were rare in our State—to-day they num- 
ber thousands, some of them on an extensive scale, but the greater 
portion forming a part of the general economy of the farm. ‘lhese 
ponds are mainly used for the culture of the carp, and in almost 
every instance, where proper ponds have been built, and ordinary 
care taken of the fish, success has attended their efforts. 
When the immense consumption of fish for food in this State is 
taken into consideration, some idea may be had of the drain on the 
natural resources of fish, and if no means had been used to protect 
and replace them to some extent, our waters must soon have been 
depleted. From the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers are taken an- 
nually ten million pounds of buffalo fish alone. In Lake Michigan 
the white fish have become scarce. During a convention at Mil- 
waukee of the Fish Commissioners of the States bordering on the 
great lakes, a number of fishermen, who are actively engaged in 
fishing on Lake Michigan, were present, and asked that the Commis- 
sioners use their influence to obtain the passage of such laws as 
would protect the fish of the lakes, giving as a reason for their 
request the fact that the white fish particularly were fast disap- 
pearing from the lakes; that, while a few years ago a small boat 
with ordinary rig and two men could, by a day’s work, fill the boat 
with fish, it was now a difficulf matter with steam tug and outfit to 
obtain a few hundred pounds of white fish in a day. Now, with 
these facts in view, it seems but reasonable to conclude that, with- 
out better protective laws, and additional efforts on the part of the 
State in restocking our waters, and seeing that a free and unob- 
structed course is furnished them, the same results will be realized, 
viz.: extreme scarcity of the native fish in our principal rivers, 
streams and lakes. 
Native F'Isu. 
_ The principal work of the Commission has been this, as in former 
seasons, the taking and distribution of native fish. ‘Owing to the 
early rise and decline in the Mississippi River, from which we derive 
05551 
